Month: March 2017

I always wanted to work in advertising, I thought it might be glamorous. In the 70’s it was populated by places which had large reception areas and these could be intimitading places. One of the first things that I discovered that the people behind those huge desks were usually women of a certain type. There were exceptions but in my long experience they could usually be termed as “frosty”, and the better looking of them were usually “glacial”.

Saatchi and Saatchi had two or three of them!

To get past them you had to have an appointment and if this was with someone junior then it might be that they had never heard of them. They are a breed that no longer exist very much, having been consigned to history these days by the phone that no-one answers left in reception that simply says “For customer service dial 191 and wait.” You can wait forever.

Here, like much of my drawing work is another drawing that might be called a ‘work in progress’. Why can I not finish anything? I like cooking omlettes as it appears not to be quite cooked egg. It’s a habit I’m trying to break but it’s been years in the making and it’s not something I find that easy.

It’s likely to be a bloke called Percy, but most people know him by his nickname PC.

First of all he would interupt you on a regular basis: ” Are you sure you want to do that?” Especially if you are talking to someone else.

He would be forever suggesting words you don’t want to use, especially if these words are in any way unusual like proclivity, whatever that means. He would suggest a word that is totally inappropriate, and completely meaningless.

Percy would go to sleep without warning and just when you needed him to be attentive.He would probably say something like: “I need to update a couple of things here so will be going to sleep for a short while, and when I wake up I’ll remember nothing you said to me”

He might occasionally get overheated, and would get out a fan to cool down, his face would go pale and blank. Then darken before switching off completely. You are unlikely to be able to wake him up for at least twelve hours.

If he had been left in the dark he would only wake up if you used the magic word. This magic word is known to him and was known to you and involves capital letters as well as numerals and lower case letters, no matter how much you try to remember Percy will not recognize your magic word and will continue to sleep. When you do remember it he will ask you if you want to be reminded in future what the magic word is, and if you want him to remember it. At this stage you start to wonder how you ever got to be ‘friends’ with him.

He will fail to recognize a printer that he once used to know quite well, and claim never to have met him before. When re-intoduced he would refuse to work with him on the grounds of incompatibility.

After trying to remember what he has been told he will have no recollection of anything said to him or when it was said.

He will suggest that he be upgraded to first class or business class on a regular monotonous basis, without any legitimate reason, and refuse to do simple tasks that he said he would do if this was not actioned.If upgraded he would then still refuse to complete those tasks for some other spurious reason like incompatiblity, and will bang on about operating systems.

Percy has a an aquaintance called Mac, they are not on speaking terms. Mac has an eating disorder which he goes on about quite a lot, making him very thin and lightweight. Mac is from a big family that thinks it is superior to anyone else in every way, with mac it’s all about me. ipad, ipod, imac.

Percy and Mac have one thing in common, they are forever running out of memory.

PC’s gone down

A drawing that suits from many years ago, you can tell by the look of the computer. No flat screens in those days, just nice big boxes and monitors that would go through a window, and there’s a floppy disc making a sharp exit. The modern ones would probably bounce off windows.

It must have been around 2002 that there was a World Cup tournament as I came accross this drawing when clearing stuff out. It was, I think , for a calendar. I suspect that I got the month when we were in the tournament and this is as anyone will recognise a footy chair. You can tell it’s done a while ago as the computer monitor is a little on the large size. I also borrowed a theme from an earlier project called ” Things to come” when I did a series of drawings about what we could have expected in the future. Ready-chewed food seems to have happened, judging by the amount of processed stuff you can get these days.

I lost the original of this but found a very good 5 x 4 transparency in a drawer with quite a lot of other early works. Getting scans of these proved to be a little tricky but I found this place on the internet that did them and they scanned them all beautifully for me. Massive files that gave my mac a bit of work to do, but the colours very true to the originals, and as in some cases my colour work fades quite a lot after a few years, they are much truer to the originals.For your info the place I found is Treasure Memories , I’d recommend. I suspect that it might be a one man business, perhaps someone who just likes photos and restoring stuff.

Anyhow I thought you might like to check this one out, and as England lost to Germany yet again last night, it seemed right for me to post it. Chair is empty as with all English fans there’s a tendency to wander off into the night at the end of a tournament and contemplate just what might have been.

It’s what I’m good at and this week have done more than my fair share. Buying some light shades on the internet ( I can almost hear you saying it serves you right ) and here they are. Climbing the ladder to fit them to the light I discover that they don’t fit. Shade frame too big to fit the light fitting fixture, I’ll soon fix that. There’s one of those gizmos that make it wider so it will fit on one of my other lights, conveniently forgetting that when I take that off, the old light will be unfit for use.

There’s a moment when you’ve bought something where you think: this is alright, I like it. Then a mere nano second or two later you can feel the doubt coming over the horizon. They do seem a bit bigger than I thought. They are a bit heavy, turns into ” not quite what I expected” and when the old fitting and the replacement one fails then the ire rises and Mr Grumbly can be heard rumbling into the room. Is there not something in the packaging that tells you what to do, comes the voice of reason, with added edge to the tone.

Scrabble, tear, look, nope! Nothing in here.

” I’ll email them and ask them what they will do about it”….

No response to the email.

I’ll ring this number here that is customer services…” we are experiencing a high volume of calls….”

That’s it, they are going back!

Here’s where this tale just gets silly. The company are almost impossible to get in touch with, so what to do? There’s nothing for it but to use the Twitter button. It would appear that all customer service is based around Twitter these days. Within 2 hours I have the means to send the bleeding things back to where they came from. I’ll not embarass them further by naming them here but their address is Dooley Rumble.

It’s in Great Blakenham, which is what this is, a bloody great blakenham that has turned into a bad tempered dooley rumble.They try to rescue the situation by sending me 2 free postage labels and send me the same one twice so when I trudge to the post office to send them back, I have to pay to send back one of them. Paying to send back:what I don’t want.

Mr Grumbly is now cranked up to full power. I’ll ask themto pay for the postage. They rescue aforementioned situation yet again by offering a £30-00 voucher to buy something else. Now the challenge of finding something that costs just £30-00 on their site that I like, and that will fit, that will not involve a round trip to Twitter , the Post Office and back.

Well there’s one to start with: “Tell me about it!” There I was commenting on the inclement weather just the other day to huge shopkeeper: I said by way of greeting: “What a cold day it is today”…”Tell me about it?” he answers. ” I just did ” I replied.

“Going forward”. There’s another phrase put in when they mean in the future. ” We’ll be making big changes going forward” is the call, when they mean “in future”. Going forward sounds like you might have a choice. Unless I’m sadly mistaken none of us can go backwards in time, and “Going forward” sounds like we have a choice.

“I’m good” as a response to “How are you?” Not good. Indequate reponse. I usually respond with ” How good is that?” OK so I’m starting to sound like a miserable old grumbler. Well I’m not really, take my word for it.

” Can I get an espresso and one of your cakes?” CAN I GET???? NO YOU CAN’T, THAT’S WHY THE PERSON BEHIND THE COUNTER IS EMPLOYED, TO GET IT FOR YOU!!! Sorry, getting cross and grumbly again.

calmed down now.

Juxtapose in any discussion regarding art and design concept that’s put there to sound like you really know what you are talking about. You probably do, my dislike is entirely unreasonable.

Spend and Save. Can’t be done so don’t let any Supermarket tell you otherwise.

Nothing acts faster. In that case don’t take that tablet, if nothing acts faster than that to deal with a headache, then do as they suggest, and take nothing.

Out for the day in the Cotswolds with my chum Mr Burton. He’s a keen folksinger and comes to it a little later in life. His voice now carefully modulated and resonant. Going out for a walk in the bright Cotswold countryside we both marvelled at our skills on choosing the right day ( unbroken sunshine ), the brilliant countryside we had the privilege of walking through via the ‘right to roam’ that we have in this country, and Robin’s expert route finding that took in two excellent pubs and a tea room to finish.

Apart from a gaggle of walkers, is that the collective noun perhaps for a group of persons of a certain age who go walking? We saw very few other people. What other people missed was Robin’s occasional bursts into song. So for those of you keen to know here’s a short clip with a lovely Cotswold stream to give a little backing.

If you like this sort of stuff then take a look at where you can hear more of it with Robin’s group the Gloucester Diamonds. The four of them.

Thanks Robin for a brilliant day out. Here are some other images from the walk.